An inexpensive and elefun bridge building puzzler.
Bridge building games such as Pontifex or Armadillo Run have been around for quite some time on the PC. 8-Bit Games (who recently became Big Head Games) decided to put a cute spin on the genre with Elefunk, their PlayStation Network release. If you have a head for logic or engineering games, or are just looking for a different type of puzzler, Elefunk is actually worth the $4.99 download.
Elefunk starts out with a quick comic book-like "story" and a fairly simple tutorial/demo which explains how to construct a sturdy walkway for your elephant. After breezing through the first level, the game seems easy enough, and then it ramps up rather dramatically. The key is learning how the different bridge pieces and shapes (including metal, wood and rope) need to be pieced together in order to support the required weight and movement on an existing structure. Construction games require you to think a lot about mass, balance and physics and Elefunk is no different. Until the concept clicks, the game requires a decent amount of patience, and trial and error restarts, to really discover how a proper bridge needs to be built. Be prepared to feel dumb at first while watching the structure, along with your poor elephants, crash and burn in spectacular fashion.
The main Puzzle Mode, which is spread over 20 levels grouped into 4 themes, begins as a fairly straightforward bridge building exercise that requires your elephant(s) to travel from point A to point B while utilizing only certain pieces. Once the second group of levels is unlocked the gameplay branches off a bit with elephant rolling/collecting puzzles and even a fun little Sixaxis enabled, Evil Knievel -like rocket jumping bonus round.
Unless you have a solid head for engineering, or until you have enough experience with the game to learn the rules, you don't always know how well things are going to work out until you start the simulation aka "unleash the elephants". A way to preview how stressed your structure is beforehand would definitely smooth out the difficulty curve (and save time), but for a 20 level game under $5, it's an acceptable omission.
Visually, the game consists of a simple environment (jungle, desert, swamp, circus), your structure and elephants/obstacles. In what could have been a clinical-looking game, 8-Bit/Big Head Games livened it up a bit with dancing elephants and some nicely rendered HD levels. The interface is simple enough, and it's easy to keep track of your pieces and what you've constructed so far. The two camera modes (regular and zoom), also help out, although a more analog camera option to freely choose a position would have been more useful.
Audio consists of a few level-themed pieces of BGM, and plenty of crumbling metal and breaking wood effects when your structure fails, and also the sounds of your poor elephants falling down with it. This is in addition to, of course, the happy elephant calls when you finally complete a level.
Along with the Puzzle mode, Elefunk includes a self explanatory Time Attack mode, along with a neat Jenga-style multiplayer Deconstruction mode which can be played both online and off. There is also online Leaderboard support. Overall, not a bad amount of options and gameplay, especially for the price.
Elefunk is a challenging change of pace from the usual twin stick shooters that seem to populate the PlayStation Store lately. It's also a little different than your typical puzzler with gameplay that's not typically found on a console. Well worth the effort to download at the very least.
